Mountain Bodyguard

Impulsively, her fingers snatched his striped silk necktie, and she held him in place. He was mere inches away from her, so very close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. She smelled his aftershave, a citrus and nutmeg flavor with a hint of something else...the indefinable scent of a man.

“You smell good.” She hadn’t intended her voice to become a purr, but that was what happened.

“So do you.”

Her gaze twined with his, and she tugged at his necktie to pull him a half inch closer. She wanted to kiss him, but the situation was messy. She was sitting on the countertop at a weird angle. If she pressed her body against his chest, she’d smear the blood all over his shirt. More important, she barely knew this man and could be setting herself up for a world of embarrassment.

He ended her indecision. She should have known that he would. Mason was a take-charge kind of guy. He buried his fingers in her untamed hair and held the back of her skull so that he was supporting her. Then he kissed her.

Crazy, wild sensations bloomed inside her. He kissed the same way he seemed to do everything else: with skill and finesse. His lips were firm, and he exerted exactly the right amount of pressure.

His tongue traced the line of her mouth, slipped inside and probed against her teeth. She opened wider for him. Her tongue joined with his and—

There was a hammering noise from the door to the hallway. A deep voice shouted, “Mason, you in there?”

They broke apart so quickly that she bit the inside of her cheek. “Bad timing,” she muttered.

“I have to go.”

Twenty questions popped inside her head. Can I see you again? Will there be another kiss? Can I give you my phone number? She said only one word aloud. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Saving my life.”

He dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “My pleasure.”

As she watched him walk out the door, she whispered, “The pleasure was all mine.”

* * *

PEERING THROUGH THE infrared scope of his rifle, Anton Karpov scanned the windows on the seventh floor of the mountain hotel, trying to catch a glimpse of Franny. Earlier tonight, he had watched her through the crosshairs on his scope. She’d been outside on the terrace, meeting and greeting, laughing and smiling. She looked good—damn good. Until tonight, he hadn’t paid any attention to the nanny.

But now he knew. Anton had positively identified Franny DeMille, the chick he’d almost moved in with. Why was she calling herself Lexie? How the hell did she get to be a nanny?

The Franny he knew was a kick-ass daredevil who couldn’t care less about kids and didn’t know a damn thing about taking care of them. When he was dating her, she’d told him—flat out—that she didn’t want babies. Hey, great news for him. He wasn’t meant to play daddy. He wasn’t serious about her, either. Still, it made him mad when she dumped him. It was supposed to be the other way around. He made sure she knew that.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he answered.

The voice on the other end was the leader himself. There had been a lot of talk at meetings about how no single person was more important than another. They were equals. Some had special skills or areas of expertise, but their group didn’t operate within the structure of a hierarchy.

Anton didn’t buy in to any of that phony, mealy-mouthed philosophy. While others talked about all for one and “the greater good,” he held his silence. There was only one truth he believed in: dollars and cents. He’d been associated with the leader for almost ten years, performing special tasks for decent pay.

Quietly, the leader said, “Move out. I’ll contact you later, Tony.”

Long ago, Anton had Americanized his name to Tony Curtis after the old-time movie star. He even looked kind of like that Tony, with his curly black hair and blue eyes. The real Tony Curtis was usually cast as a pretty boy hero, and that didn’t suit Anton Karpov, not at all. He only changed his mind when he saw the movie star play the role of Albert DeSalvo, widely believed to be the Boston Strangler.

“Are you sure I should go, sir?” He was one of the few who knew the leader’s real name, but he seldom spoke it. “I have a couple of angles for a clear shot.”

“I’m tempted, Tony. I’d like to kill those idiots who got caught.”

“Is there any chance they won’t spill their guts?”

“Oh, they’ll talk. The admiral’s men are skilled interrogators.”

“Is that a problem?”

“They don’t know enough to worry about. They’re unimportant.”

The leader didn’t seem concerned about losing five men. The less influential members of Anti-Conspiracy Committee for Democracy, also known as AC-CD, had access to a limited amount of information. They were assigned simple jobs. Tonight, the only thing they’d been required to do was disable the hotel security and fill in for them, leaving the way open for more experienced operatives. The trained, experienced staff, led by Anton/Tony, would have kidnapped the admiral.

Anton/Tony slung his rifle over his shoulder and rose to his feet. “It was the nanny who messed up the plan.”

“How could a little girl like that be such a big problem?”

The leader didn’t know her. For a couple of seconds, Tony felt superior to the man who usually gave the orders. For a change, it was Tony who had the ace up his sleeve, information the leader wasn’t privy to, and he was tempted to hold back.

But he didn’t care about showing how smart he was and gaining power in AC-CD. He was after a quick payday, and the best way to separate the leader from his cash was to show him something he might want to buy. Franny was a prize he could set before the leader.

“She says her name is Lexie, but I recognized her tonight. The nanny is a karate expert. It’s Franny DeMille, my old girlfriend.”

“You don’t say.” The leader’s voice dropped to a low, thoughtful level. “If you asked her to help you, would she?”

“We didn’t break up on good terms, but I could always get her to do what I wanted.” Not exactly true, but he wished it so. When he’d been with her, he was a better man. “She’ll do what I say.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Before leaving his sniper nest, Tony pulled up his balaclava to cover the lower part of his face. Silently and stealthily, he made his way through the forest. His experience as a hunting guide was why he’d been pegged for this assignment. He could be trusted to blend with nature and not be seen. And his skill at marksmanship was worthy of a world-class assassin.

Chapter Four (#ulink_055bf12b-6713-5502-839e-a0846232d0d5)

In the rustic-style foyer outside the banquet hall, Mason conferred quietly with his partner Dylan, whose tall, wiry frame had been transformed from nerdy to sophisticated by a tailored black suit and a striped silk tie. Likewise, his messy brown hair had been tamed in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. They were waiting for the admiral’s wife to leave the hall and join them. Prescott had asked them to escort her to the conference room, where he and several branches of law enforcement and the military had gathered.

“NSA, CIA, Interpol, army and navy intelligence,” Dylan said. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “The gang’s all here.”

“How do you know their affiliations?”

“They were all at the banquet.” As part of security procedure, he had vetted the invited guests and used facial recognition software to make sure they matched their stated identity. “Some of these guys are high-ranking hotshots. On six of them, I got an ‘access denied’ message when I searched for further info.”

“Did you?” Mason asked. “Tell me the truth. Did you dig deeper?”

“Not yet.”

But he could if the need arose. Dylan was a skilled hacker, capable of breaching NSA or CIA security without leaving a trace. He’d already patched Admiral Prescott through to the offices of the Secretary of the Navy on a video server so that SecNav could join the meeting in the conference room.

The sound of laughter erupted from inside the banquet hall. For the past hour, the guests had been watching a PowerPoint presentation that outlined the medical and sanitation needs of children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mason glanced over at his partner. “We did good.”